


Valdangelo One Shots

by miloisnotgay



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: Angst, Comedy, Drama, Fluff, Gay, M/M, Rare Pairings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-12
Updated: 2020-04-18
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:55:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23604910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miloisnotgay/pseuds/miloisnotgay
Summary: A collection of short stories revolving around an unpopular ship that there is no demand for.Updated every five to seven days, or so.
Relationships: Nico di Angelo/Leo Valdez
Comments: 3
Kudos: 51





	1. i don't know what i'm doing-?

Hey there- I'm new to writing on this site, so bear with me.

It is rare that I will take requests, but in the off chance that I do, make sure that it is a detailed explanation, or there is no way that I will write it.

I don't have much to say, but updates will be posted here, so be on the lookout for that.

Enjoy, I guess.


	2. "Gay" Is Not a Bad Word

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Leo comes out as bisexual.

It came as a surprise to Leo when he realized that guys were hot.

Well, it wasn't so much a surprise, but rather an "aw, crap" moment. It was Jason Grace that had made him come to the realization. The realization that kissing a guy sounded just as good as kissing a girl. I mean, who else would've assisted him in his bisexual awakening? Jason was his hunky blond-haired, blue-eyed best friend. It was the most cliché thing, and yet it happened to Leo. And it happened so fast. So inconveniently. Piper and Jason had just gotten into a relationship. They were so perfect, and Leo was so happy for them. And he was still happy for them even after he came to the conclusion that, yes: Jason was officially his first guy crush.

The Latino found it increasingly difficult to spend time around Jason. The desire to be closer to the male was always eating at him. He found himself constantly eyeing Piper when she cuddled into her boyfriend's side. If anyone had walked by and noticed him, they would've guessed he was jealous of Jason. That he wanted Piper to be snuggling with him, instead. When, in reality, he wanted to switch places with the girl.

These thoughts nagged at him daily. What would it be like to be in a relationship with Jason Grace? Kisses, and hugs, and flirting. It sounded like a dream. And, it was. Just a distant wish that Leo was too afraid to reach out to. He didn't want to mess with his friends' relationship.

So, he could only admire the attractive blond from afar and keep his forbidden feelings to himself, buried deep down. Until they'd eventually claw their way out into the open...

"When did you know you were into dudes?" Leo asked one day. He was in the mess hall on the Argo II, and there was only one other person present.

Nico di Angelo.

They were sitting on opposite sides of the table. Not even directly across from one another, they were a good ten feet apart. And they'd been sitting in utter silence before Leo had spoken.

The Italian had lifted his head with a brow raised. He and Leo locked eyes, brown against brown before the younger broke the contact to do a scan around the room. He swallowed the food in his mouth before returning his gaze to the curly-haired male. "Who are you talking to?"

Leo blinked and a confused, lopsided half-smile enveloped his face. "You?" He answered. "Who else? You're the only one here. And the only one on the ship who likes dudes, as far as I know."

Well, that last part wasn't completely true, was it?

"We just don't talk much," Nico replied with a lazy shrug. Then, he was turning back to his breakfast.

Leo studied the other boy for awhile before lifting his eyebrows expectantly. "Well?"

Nico paused before he could take another bite of his cereal. He turned his head and copied Leo's expression. "Well what?"

Leo puffed his cheeks out in mild frustration. Did Nico forget what he was asking? He'd asked it, like, two seconds ago. "How did you know you were... Y'know..."

Nico's face shifted, and he suddenly seemed unamused. "Gay?" He finished for the hesitating Latino.

"Yeah, exactly!" Leo nodded his head a little too quickly and leaned forward, waiting for Nico's answer. He was trying not to seem too eager, but he was getting desperate. How long could he go without blabbing his own secret? He wanted to blab it the right way. When he was positively sure that he wasn't straight.

Nico sighed deeply. "It's not a bad word, Valdez. You're allowed to say it-"

"Nico, when did you realized you liked guys?!" Leo exclaimed impatiently, cutting the dark-haired male's sentence short.

The male blinked. He hadn't ever heard Leo raise his voice, like that. "Percy." He said plainly before elaborating moments later. "I was attracted to Percy. And I've never really been attracted to females, so I figured, you know. I might be homosexual."

Leo exhaled deeply through his nose and nodded his head. "Okay, yeah... Makes sense." He said before dipping his head to have a staring contest with his untouched breakfast burrito.

The air was quiet for a moment before Nico spoke up once again. "Are you gay?" He asked, causing the other boy to stiffen.

"No... Well, I mean... Half-gay, I guess... Is it wrong that I want to be with Jason?" Leo looked at Nico helplessly. He was a scared little bisexual, and the son of Hades looked to be the only person he could reach out to.

Nico felt a strange sensation spread throughout his chest. He couldn't explain it, he... Actually felt bad for Leo. The Latino was in the exact same situation that he had once been in. Crushing on a taken guy.

"No," he answered immediately. "No, it's not wrong. And if you're sure your urge to be in a relationship with Jason is genuine, then you shouldn't doubt your sexuality."

Leo watched Nico get up and move to leave the room. "Should I come out?" He asked before the boy could fully disappear from the mess hall.

The dark-haired male stopped and then turned over his shoulder to look at Leo. "If you feel the need to come out, you should. I know it can be... Constricting when you aren't living openly as your true self."

And then, he was gone. And Leo was left to drown in the deep words of the son of Hades.

All of Leo's time that day was spent planning. He'd finally decided he'd come out at dinner. He wanted to get it out of the way. Be his "true self" or whatever Nico had said.

It wasn't until he was actually sitting at the table with all of his friends that he was having second thoughts.

His motivation was wallowing away, and it didn't return until he lifted his head to find Nico staring at him. Almost expectantly. The boy's gaze had quickly retreated, and he was staring at the wood surface of the table before Leo could actually acknowledge him.

A deep breath in and out later, and Leo was standing up on his bench. "Guys are cute."

All eyes fell on the Latino. Aside from Nico's, of course. He mostly got blank looks, with a few confused expressions here and there. It took him a moment to notice that nobody understood him. He was being too vague. So, he swallowed down his nerves and continued with his confession. "Like... Really cute."

More silence followed, and a couple of his friends looked away to continue what they were doing. Frank and Hazel exchanged a look. Percy tilted his head. Annabeth and Piper had resumed their conversation, and Jason was staring at Leo as if he had just spoken Spanish, and he was trying to translate it.

"Oh, for Gods' sake," Nico spoke up after a moment, causing all attention to be drawn from the curly-haired male who was still on his feet. "He's trying to come out to you. He's bisexual."

Leo nodded his head proudly. "What he said." The groups attention was turned back to him. They seemed a little shocked, but no one seemed disgusted or upset.

It surprised Leo. "None of you... Are weirded out?" The teen asked with his brows knitted in confusion.

Once again, the demigod's shifted to glance at Nico. Then, back at Leo. They were all staring at him with blank expressions.

It took Leo awhile, but his mouth eventually bent into an "o" shape. "Right because-" He gestured to the dark-haired son of Hades. "He's already- Yeah, okay. I got it. Carry on!" He gave a nervous smile and then sat back down. Of course they wouldn't mind, Nico was already out. And nobody seemed to mind that.

Throughout the rest of dinner, Leo relished in the feeling of weight that had been lifted off his shoulders. It was a relief, to say the least. It stuck him with a goofy grin that didn't leave, not even after everyone began heading off to sleep.

Leo was bouncing up and down as he left the mess hall with Nico, a beaming expression on his tanned features. "I did it, I did it, I did it! I came out! I did it!"

Nico glanced over at the male and softly shook his head, a small smile growing on his lips. He wasn't gonna wreck his mood by mentioning that, technically, he was the one who had come out for him.

No, he'd tell him another time.


	3. Okay, Boomer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Leo teases Nico because of the time period he was born in.

It was days like these ones that really made Nico regret confiding in Leo Valdez...

"Come on, kid. Tell me about your life!" Leo pressed as the two sat together on the railing of the Argo II. Clouds tickled their shoe-clad feet, and the moonlight didn't quite make their faces visible to one another. Pretty close, though. Nico couldn't stop the huff that left his nose. Kid? What gave this overly-flirtatious elf the right to call him kid? They weren't even three years apart in age.

The two had ended up on night patrol together. Well, not really. Leo was technically supposed to be asleep, but he tended to stay up pretty late due to his ADHD and constant need to make sure his ship was in tip-top conditions. The son of Hephaestus had caught a glimpse of Nico during the Italian's hour of lookout, seated up on the wooden banister lining of the boat. Quiet and spooky-looking, as per usual. They never talked to one another that often, but Leo'd walked up and perched himself beside Nico, anyways. And then, he proceeded to do what he did best: He started talking.

"What life?" Nico uttered bitterly, almost as if it were Leo's fault that his past wasn't exactly ideal. "I should be dead right now, you know... Or in my late seventies. But most likely dead." Leo tilted his head, trying to meet Nico's sunken gaze. But, the stubborn boy just continued to have a staring contest with his lap. When Leo didn't say anything, the son of Hades continued. "Ever heard of the Lotus Hotel and Casino?" Leo shook his head, and Nico could only barely pick up on the movement in his peripheral vision. "Right..." And that was all he said, at first. These weren't pleasant memories, and he really didn't appreciate Leo digging them up.

"Right," repeated Leo after he'd grown tired of the thick and uncomfortable silence that hung between them. "You wanna maybe... Like, tell me about it? Or..." The male trailed off. It didn't take much for him to see that the subject was a sensitive one. And forcing Nico to talk about it was the last thing he wanted to do. "I can tell you about my life?" He offered hastily. "I shoved a gummy worm up my nose, once-"

"Uh, no," Nico replied immediately, cutting the other male's confession short. "That's alright... I just don't talk about this a lot, is all." And Leo understood that. More than most would, as a matter of fact. He had plenty of topics in his own life that he'd rather keep to himself. Nico's following words brought the Latino out of his pestering thoughts. It bothered him that the son of Hades still refused to look his way. "It's... Not a great place. I mean, it seems great, but... Then you lose track of time, and... Next thing you know, within one month, it's actually been sixty-something years."

Leo was gaping at that. His eyes told Nico that he wanted to say a billion things. Hell, a trillion, even. But, he just sat there with his mouth hanging open as if it were on a broken hinge. "Oh my gods, is that why you like My Chemical Romance so much?" It took Nico a long moment to realize what Leo meant, and it took him an even longer moment to explain to the idiot that the band wasn't that old. At all. "It makes sense..." Leo whispered to mostly himself as his fingers raked through his curls. "Why you act like such an old grumpy grandpa, all the time... You actually are one!" The skin of Nico's nose creased and he tenderly shook his head. He then opened his mouth to tell Leo that it wasn't really like that. And that he was still mentally and physically a teenager because of how the time had gone by during his stay in Vegas. But, the guy didn't give him the chance. "Holy Hades, you're a Boomer!"

Leo's grin was so wide and bright that Nico almost didn't have the heart to tell him that he was wrong. Almost. "Actually, I wasn't born during the baby boom," he explained with what could've easily been mistaken as a sympathetic half-smile. "I'm a part of the Silent Generation. When there was a bunch of wars and economic depressions going on-"

"Nuh-uh, nuh-uh." Leo held up a finger and Nico stared at the other male's shadowy figure with raised eyebrows, waiting for him to counter it with whatever dumb idea had just popped into his pea brain. "No, because you were still a kid during the boom, right? And so you're practically a freaking Boomer!" The conversation took a turn from there. It was no longer an unnecessarily depressing life story, but rather a playful, yet frustrating debate among the two. Nico tried to explain that Leo's reasoning would make him a part of multiple different generations, but Leo just kept yelling over him, claiming that he was acting like a real Boomer.

And that brings us back to the present. Nico figured that this whole Boomer thing would wear out, and Leo would be teasing him about something else, in a few days. It was ridiculous, anyways. Nico had even given him evidence. Real proof that he wasn't what Leo thought he was. Yet, the nagging continued. At this point, the Latino was just making himself look stupid...

So, why did it irk Nico, so much?

"Need a walking stick?" Leo offered one day when they were leaving the mess hall. He wore a taunting smirk. The younger male--apparently older, by Leo's standards--had tripped over a loose floorboard, and stumbled forward. He'd caught himself, luckily, and stood up straight, as if nothing had even happened. But, Leo saw it. And he found it to be the perfect opportunity to really push this Boomer thing until he reached Nico's limit. "I could probably find you a cane. Ooh! Or, I could get you one of those metal thingies with the tennis balls on the bottom! Like the one Carl Fredricksen's got. The guy on Up? Can I call you Mr. Fredricksen?"

Nico massaged his temples slowly and let his eyes fall to a close. "I don't need a cane, I don't need a walker and I'm not a fictional character," he stated calmly. In reality, he was on the verge of becoming very not calm very fast. And Leo was doing a fantastic job of nudging him dangerously close to that edge of insanity.

"Okay, Boomer," Leo said cheerfully before skipping off to his room, leaving the fuming Nico to stand there, alone, with his hands drawn into fists at his sides.

It didn't get any easier. In fact, things only grew worse. Nico was beginning to recognize that Leo wasn't giving up on this absurd little joke because he knew that it would get a rise out of him. But it wasn't like Nico could just stop giving Leo the reactions that he wanted. It was so infuriating, and the Italian had always been one to speak his mind.

"Dentures." Nico's tone was flat, but his expression is what truly said it all: He was not impressed. In his hand was a small box that the son of Hephaestus had given to him. As soon as he'd pulled the lid off, he wanted to throw it. Preferably at Leo's smug little face. "Valdez, this is incredibly dumb. Even for you." He dropped the box and the fake set of teeth that occupied it before folding his arms.

Leo clasped a hand over his chest and feigned offense. "I spent good money buying those for you, grandpappy!" He said in a shrill voice. He seemed to be holding off a smile or something of the sort, and that just angered Nico even more.

Nico's head tilted and he surveyed Leo intently. Sternly. It almost seemed like the son of Hades wanted to jump on him and tear him to shreds. He remained docile, for the time being. "Don't call me that, for one. And, also, don't waste your money on dumb stuff that you think will make me tick. It won't work, alright?"

Leo shrugged his shoulders and pouted his bottom lip outward as if to say "hey, looks like it's working pretty well, to me". And then, he stooped down to retrieve his box and Nico's little gag gift. "Okay, Boomer." He was gone before Nico could go off on him.

It was like listening to a terribly overplayed song on repeat all week. Leo only ever said two words to Nico, it seemed, and you can probably guess what they were. He tried really hard to ignore him. He avoided the guy best he could. Somehow, Leo always found a way to get to him.

"I'm trying to train, can you go do that somewhere else?"

"Okay, Boomer."

"You can't put that there, it'll mess the entire thing up."

"Okay, Boomer."

"Leo, seriously. I'm fourteen-"

"Okay, Boomer."

"Again, wasn't even born in that time period-"

"Okay, Boomer."

"Valdez-"

"Okay, Boomer."

And it just. Kept. Going. Over and over again. It was driving Nico up the walls. He really felt like he was going insane. The word "boomer" didn't even sound like a real word, anymore. It even got to the point where he was awoken by nightmares that consisted of Leo screaming "okay, Boomer" at him repeatedly.

It wasn't until Nico truly looked like he was old and weak and dying that Leo finally cut it out. The two were the only ones on the deck, just like the night they'd had their first full-length conversation. The night that had started all of this nonsense that reduced Nico to a sulky pile of bones leaning against the rail.

"Hey, Neeks," Leo greeted as he approached the dark-haired male with an awkward smile adorning his lips. He rested his back against the banister. "How you holding up? I noticed you didn't eat dinner... Or lunch... Or Breakfast." He was trying to subtly hint at his concern without having to fully vocalize it. Just because, y'know, it was kind of hard to be compassionate when being the joker is kind of your thing.

Nico glanced over at the fidgety Latino and then turned to face forward, once again, his expression remaining dull and drained of everything. "Valdez. It's nice to know you still have a vocabulary outside of that "okay, boomer" stuff." That comment made Leo wince with discomfort. "And I had a snack today, so I'm doing fine, thanks."

They rested in another silence that Leo didn't try to break, for awhile. "Did I do this?" He asked in a hushed voice, lifting his eyes to gaze at Nico like a sad puppy dog might. "Because I really didn't mean to, it was just a joke."

"I know." Nico rubbed his hands along his face, as if that would wipe away the bags under his eyes and restore a little bit of color to his skin. It didn't. "I get like this over small things, it's really no big deal. I'll be back on my feet before you know it."

Leo didn't believe him. Nico didn't even believe him. "It's not just because of the Boomer thing... Is it?" The son of Hephaestus forced himself to get the question out. And his stomach fell into his shoes as Nico dropped his head. He just looked so defeated... So broken.

Nico swallowed and then let out a long sigh through his nose. "I guess all of this was just an unwanted reminder of the childhood I missed out on. I kind of wish I'd been able to grow up in my real time period. Even if the world was at war, and it was dangerous for me to even exist."

It sort of stung, hearing those words come out of Nico's mouth. Not that Leo was all that close to the guy, but it still made him feel a little... Forgotten. Nico would rather be growing up somewhere else. In a completely different place in time, for crying out loud. His friends here, in the present... Did they just mean nothing to him? Did Leo mean nothing to him? "You'd go back if you had the chance?" The curly-haired teen asked thoughtlessly with a sourness to his tone that he couldn't quite control.

"That's not really a question I need to be asked, right now," Nico shot back. It was supposed to be a snap, but it sounded empty, just like the Italian looked and probably felt. "There are too many factors to consider. My sister might have never died, I could've grown up to discover something new or different... There was a chance to change history. A chance to be important." Leo stayed quiet as he knew he should while the other boy spoke. "And, instead, I got stuck in a hotel and practically time traveled to now, where no one could care less if I wasn't even around."

Leo perked up at that, looking insulted by Nico's words. "There are... So many things wrong with what you just said to me, man." Nico knitted his brows and glanced in Leo's direction, waiting for him to continue, because he knew that he would. "There is still a chance for you to change history. Your time's not up, just yet. And you are important. I know it doesn't seem like it, but just consider all of the things that our group wouldn't have accomplished without you." Leo licked his lips and proceeded to ramble, his words coming out fast and slightly jumbled together. "If you weren't around, we would lose everything. It may be the prophecy of seven, but who cares about whatever the dumb gods make up? What have they ever done that was beneficial to us? You're important, Nico. And I may not know you all that well, but I know the basics. Your crucial to this team, and we'd fall apart without you."

Nico watched Leo go off on his little tangent, waiting until he was finished to nod and stand up straight. "Thank you," he said simply, as if Leo had just told him that his hair looked nice today. The son of Hephaestus blinked at the other male as he shot him a sideways smile. A rare sight that Leo snapped a mental picture of.

"You're welcome..."

"Boomer."

"Leo, I swear to the gods."


End file.
